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ON THE SEQUENCE OF THE PERMIAN ROCKS NEAR RIPON. BY 
REV. J. STANLEY TUTE, B.A. (PL. X.) 
There is considerable difficulty in determining* with certainty the 
bottom beds of the Permian Rocks, near Ripon. Some beds, indeed, 
are seen to rest unconformably upon the Plumpton Rocks, as in 
Studley grounds beneath the ‘Surprise/ near the Abbey, and at 
Knaresbro’. But these seem to me not to be actually the lowest 
beds of all, though, of course, they are the lowest in those places. 
Other beds occur as at Nordhouse, in Aldfield, and Well ; which cannot 
be assigned to any position among the rocks which appear in these 
three places, or in the rocks above them, and must, therefore, have 
an horizon below. The Carboniferous Rocks had suffered immense 
denudation before the Permian period. If the Coal Measures ever 
existed in this neighbourhood (which I doubt), they had all been 
washed away, and much of the underlying millstone grit. If they 
did not exist, then the grit must have been exposed during the whole 
period of the Coal Measures to aerial denudation, and the consequence 
must have been the formation of considerable river-valleys, into 
which, as the land was sinking during the Permian period the sea 
flowed, and the earliest deposits would naturally be made in these 
ancient valleys. In lithological character also, as well as in the 
manner in which the fossils are preserved, the beds at Aldfield and 
Well, differ from the rest of the Permian series. At Well, the fossils 
seem chiefly to consist of Producta horrida ; at Aldfield I have found 
more than twenty different kinds, most of which occured in a very 
thin band of clay, which has now been exhausted by the extension 
of the limestone workings. 
The bed which seems to lie above this conssits of small slabs of 
yellowish limestone containing Axinus obscurus, very similar to the 
Garforth limestone, near Leeds.* It occurs in the Studley ground 
beneath the “ Surprise and at Hob Green, in Markington. It is 
difficult to determine the actual thickness of these two beds, but 
they certainly cannot together be less than 50 or 60 feet. 
Above them is another bed, well exposed in Markington, of at 
* At Garforth, the Limestone lies upon a bed of sand, which seems to have been 
derived from the Carboniferous rocks, and is probably a passage bed of Permian age. 
